


Back from the cordial Grave I drag thee

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Conversations, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Nurses & Nursing, Role Reversal, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-03 22:56:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10977102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: It was not like it had been before and she would not let it become so.





	Back from the cordial Grave I drag thee

“You won’t be able to return, you must know that,” Anne Hastings said. Her tone was not kind, but it was not cruel, not glorying in her imminent promotion to Head Nurse. Miss Dix would refuse to consider any explanation and Major McBurney had already shown a predilection for Anne that would make her advancement the obvious choice after Mary left. There was hardly any time to pause in packing, but Mary felt she owed the woman a response. Or perhaps she only wished to say aloud what she had worried and suffered over so, even though she had made her decision nearly instantaneously once McBurney issued his dire edict.

“I cannot do otherwise,” she began, her hands folding his linen shirts, his vests, then tucking them neatly in the open satchel, a wifely pleasure she had not thought she would have again. 

“It way well ruin you,” Anne interrupted, offering a warning and not a satisfied pronouncement. She was unfamiliar, this Anne Hastings, and Mary wondered what it was about the situation that brought forth this other voice, the expression that was thoughtful and concerned, that did not criticize when there was ample cause as she had eagerly done when there had been none.

“If I let him go, there would be no question of that,” Mary replied. Jedediah had been sick for several days, fractious and irritable with all the staff, all the patients, before he had taken to his bed, sullen and weak. There had only been a few hours before his fever spiked and hell had broken loose and he had begged her not to leave him, to make sure he would not be sent away. She had been soaked with the icy water they’d bathed him in to bring his temperature down, but he had been the one shivering, panting, forgetting where he was, who else might be there as he cried out softly _oh Molly, don’t let me go, don’t let him do it, I can’t be sent away from you, Molly_. Sister Isabella had dropped her eyes before Mary had to look into the nun’s fresh young face and stand gently, rightfully accused. She had soothed him without thinking, never imagining McBurney would be cruel enough to cast out his desperately ill Executive Officer, his hostility vituperative and intense beyond any incitement Jedediah could have given him in their brief work together.

“You cannot mean it-- he has nowhere to go! He is estranged from his family, there is no one to fetch him and no home for him to be welcomed in,” Mary had exclaimed when McBurney declared they could no longer devote their meager resources to caring for a doctor who could not treat patients, who had become a patient himself, the burden Jed had decried and feared becoming. 

“A pity, I’m sure, madam. Yet, we don’t trade in pity here, we practice medicine. You might address the situation with the chaplain but don’t dally. You are needed here to do your duty,” McBurney had responded. Mary had bitten her lip rather than say McBurney had yet to make rounds on any ward, had yet to assess or diagnose any patient but himself, while Jed and Hale had continued to see to all the men under McBurney’s queer, unpredictable, fey scrutiny. She had gone to Jed’s bedside first and seeing how restlessly he slept, how Sister Isabella frowned when Mary inquired with her gaze alone about Jed’s health, how his hands plucked at the bedclothes, those slender, sensitive hands that could save a man’s sight or move a rook into mate, the hands she had held and had felt against her cheek, her lip, pressed to her heart, and she had known Jed must leave Mansion House and she would go with him.

“Miss Dix won’t forgive you,” Anne said, repeating what Mary had said to herself. It was a smaller grief, one she could bear.

“Hers is not the forgiveness I would seek,” Mary said. For all that he had asked, implored her to stay with him, she knew Jedediah would rail at her for it, at the risk she took for her own health, the damage to her character, her loss of position, when he had turned the corner and was regaining his health. He was given to self-pity and self-loathing and would not see his value; he could not understand that what she chose was selfish. For all that he liked to present himself as standing apart from his fellows, he judged too much by society’s mores and his definition of what was due a lady was not Mary’s. She expected his condemnation to come with his returning strength and only hoped he would not say something neither of them could forget.

“Byron says you’re taking him to Baltimore,” Anne said. Jedediah stirred but did not wake and Mary wished again that Samuel could be spared to help her get Jedediah home. McBurney had refused as if he were the owner Samuel had never had, but she would not let her friend incur the displeasure of a man powerful enough to destroy a freeman without the slightest effort. Charlotte Jenkins had known an escaped slave named Thomas who had family in Maryland and who was eager for the journey. She had thought to manage alone until Jed had tried to walk the few steps from his bed to his chair for the linens to be changed and she had buckled under the weight of his collapse and felt his shamed tears on her bare neck, the sharp angle of his hipbone the illness had revealed. He had fallen asleep before she could finish consoling him and Mary had planned what she would say to Charlotte when she accepted her help.

“Yes. He has friends there, it won’t be hard to open his house again,” Mary answered.

“Will you? For you are not Mrs. Foster, nor any relation. Will they welcome the Baroness von Olnhausen, a disgraced Yankee nurse?” Anne asked.

“Perhaps a few. Shall you be surprised to know I have never been counted among the popular set, even in Manchester? It won’t trouble me as long as those Jed needs most do not turn away. I don’t think they will—they have not here,” Mary said, thinking of Samuel and Henry, the Frenchwoman lately arrived but stalwart nonetheless, Matron who had booked the tickets and held Mary by the elbow for a long moment. Jed’s closest friend was a man named Jonathan Harris he’d spoken of in the quieter evenings, but he was working in Boston and Mary knew she could not have taken Jed home with her unless he was her husband. There were others he’d mentioned still living in Baltimore, Scott and Foyle, men who were colleagues but more than that, companions from his university days, and an old friend, named Wyatt, who’d married a woman “you would like, though Eliza never did, Harriet has her causes, just as you do,” whom Mary thought she could call upon and be assured of assistance.

“He does have a way of engendering a…certain tenacious regard, doesn’t he? A blessing we’re not all granted,” Anne remarked. Mary let her eyes stray to Jed’s face, noticing the grey at his temple and his chapped lips. She felt a compelling urge to take him in her arms and lay his head against her breast, to breathe her own health into him and watch his eyes open, full of recognition, trust and an overwhelming tenderness, to see the kiss he wanted to give her. She looked back and saw Anne had been regarding her with the acuity she brought to the most challenging cases, the few that made Anne show the gentleness she generally concealed.

“You won’t regret it,” she said. It was a question but only a little; it was a declaration and an assessment, a prediction and an oracle and Mary took it as all of those and everything else it was—a wish, a memory, a hint of the devastation that had left Anne as she was.

“I couldn’t. I’ve gone through this before, remember? I know what I can bear—and what I can’t. What I won’t,” Mary said, closing the clasps on the satchel. Anne nodded, glanced at Jed, who was starting to wake, a hand at his cheek, rubbing his eyes.

“He won’t be angry long, you needn’t pay his temper any mind. But let him apologize properly for it anyway. He’ll likely make a lovely apology if you let him,” Anne suggested, smiling as Mary had never seen, tolerant and amused and so very sad. Mary was not sure what she would have said in response, what agreement or question she might have voiced, but then she heard something that took all her attention, took it though she gave it willingly, joyfully, entirely and she turned away from Anne to answer it.

“Molly?”

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, Jed's turn to have typhoid and be sent away! I thought this brought up lots of interesting ideas about how Mary would cope, given Gustav's death and how Anne might react, given the death of her true love in the Crimea. Jonathan Harris is visiting again, on loan from emmadelosnardos, and I gave Jed a few other friends with references to fandoms that seemed apropos.
> 
> The title is from Emily Dickinson.


End file.
